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Sovereignty no longer possible, Lucien Bouchard says

Quebec sovereigntists woke up to a political migraine Wednesday induced by their most popular living leader.

Lucien Bouchard, the charismatic former Parti Quebecois premier who brought Quebec to within a whisker of independence, launched a broadside against his old party.

Former Quebec Premier Lucien Bouchard chats with Guy St-Pierre, former president of SNC Lavalin during a news conference in this Oct. 19, 2005 file photo. (THE CANADIAN PRESS)

It was a rare comment on current affairs from Bouchard, who has steadfastly refused to talk publicly about politics since his 2001 retirement.

His comments were summed up in a front-page headline Wednesday in Le Devoir newspaper: Sovereignty is no longer achievable, Bouchard says.

Not only is independence on the shelf but it’s not something Quebecers should be focusing on, Bouchard said during a public forum the previous evening in Quebec City.

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“I learned about it this morning. But if I’d learned about it last night I wouldn’t have slept,” said Bernard Landry, the man who replaced Bouchard as premier, in an interview with LCN.

“(Bouchard) is a great and complex man. . . This deeply disappoints me.”

Landry and other sovereigntists defended their cause, and said they will continue fighting for it even if Bouchard won’t.

Bouchard argued that his old party should be focusing on education and economic issues instead — like public debt.

In an additional blast at his old mates, he suggested the party was becoming radical and pandered to prejudices.

For the PQ’s current leader, Pauline Marois, it was business as usual Wednesday. She began the day by brushing past reporters seeking to ask her about the Bouchard comments.

Then she started the day’s question period by asking the government why it had changed the law to allow Orthodox Jewish schools to offer classes on Saturday.

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Premier Jean Charest snapped back that she should have taken her former leader’s advice before the day’s question period.

The Jewish-schools question is only the latest so-called identity issue being stressed by the PQ in recent months as it seeks to win over nationalist voters once tempted by the now-faltering ADQ party.

It’s also the issue that caused Bouchard to launch his broadside. During a public forum on Tuesday night, he was asked about the issue.

Bouchard replied: “I don’t like what I’m hearing from the Parti Quebecois.”

He invoked the memory of the party’s most beloved figure, founder Rene Levesque, who went out of his way to demonstrate respect for religious minorities.

“I think of Rene Levesque,” Bouchard said.

“Rene Levesque was a man of generosity. He didn’t ask questions like that, Rene Levesque. He didn’t think our identity was threatened.”

He then went on to say that the sovereignty battle should be shelved for the foreseeable future.

Bouchard was so popular in Quebec that, during the 1995 referendum, supporters would strain to touch him as he delivered a series of speeches to adoring nationalist crowds.

His pro-Independence Yes side started the referendum campaign at a major disadvantage, before Bouchard — then a federal politician leading the Bloc Quebecois — took leadership of the campaign.

Under his leadership, the Yes rallied to within less than a percentage point of winning breaking up the country.

Bouchard then became premier, and spent most of his time in office saying he would wait for the so-called “winning conditions” — like eliminating the budget deficit — before holding another referendum.

That go-slow approach annoyed the PQ’s most ardent faction.

After one final dust-up with that wing of the party — a fight which, ironically, also started with a dismissive comment about Jews by a prominent Pequiste — Bouchard angrily left the PQ.

In his retirement speech, he cited the so-called Michaud affair and told a shocked Red Room of the national assembly that he had failed to rekindle the flames of Independence.

That was on Jan. 11, 2001. Bouchard has maintained a public silence on that issue ever since.

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